He saw a blue line of sea, so clearly drawn that the horizon might have been a string stretched from the corner eaves to the snow-white light-house standing on the farthest spit of land; blue sea and yellow sand curving round it, with a white edge of breakers; inshore, the sand rising to a cliff ridged with grassy hummocks; farther inshore, the hummocks united and rolling away up to inland downs, but broken here and there on their way with scars of sand; over all, white gulls wheeling.  He could hear the nearest ones mewing as they sailed over the house.

Taffy had seen the sea once before, at Dawlish, on the journey to Tewkesbury; and again on the way home.  But here it was bluer altogether, and the sands were yellower.  Only he felt disappointed that no ship was in sight, nor any dwelling nearer than the light-house and the two or three white cottages behind it.  He dressed in a hurry and said his prayers, repeating at the close, as he had been taught to do, the first and last verses of the Morning Hymn: 

     “Awake, my soul, and with the sun
        Thy daily stage of duty run;
      Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise
        To pay thy morning sacrifice.

     “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
        Praise Him, all creatures here below;
      Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
        Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

He ran downstairs.  In this queer house the stairs led right down into the kitchen.  The front door, too, opened into the kitchen, which was really a slate-paved hall, with a long table set between the doorway and the big open hearth.  The floor was always strewn with sand; there was no trouble about this, for the wind blew plenty under the door.

Taffy found the table laid, and his mother busily slicing bread for his bread and milk.  He begged for a hot cake from the hearth, and ran out of doors to eat it.  Humility lifted the latch for him, for the cake was so hot that he had to pass it from hand to hand.

Outside, the wind came upon him with a clap on the shoulder, quite as if it had been a comrade waiting.

Taffy ran down the path and out upon the sandy hummocks, setting his face to the wind and the roar of the sea, keeping his head low, and still shifting the cake from hand to hand.  By-and-by he fumbled and dropped it; stooped to pick it up, but saw something which made him kneel and peer into the ground.

The whole of the sand was moving; not by fits and starts, but constantly; the tiny particles running over each other and drifting in and out of the rushes, like little creatures in a dream.  While he looked, they piled an embankment against the edge of his cake.  He picked it up, ran forward a few yards, and peered again.  Yes, here too; here and yonder, and over every inch of that long shore.